Protestants

Defiant but demoralized, leaders of Northern Ireland's major Protestant brotherhood urged their followers to refrain from violence after British security forces on Sunday blocked their most controversial parade for the fourth year in a row.

Under British pressure, a handful of neutral politicians agreed Saturday to join the Protestant voting bloc in Northern Ireland's legislature, a bid to overpower hard-line lawmakers and save the province's unity government. The reluctant decision by the Alliance party, which represents both moderate Roman Catholics and Protestants, freed the way for a second legislative vote Monday--three days after Protestant extremists defeated David Trimble's reelection as government leader.

Thousands of Catholics marched Friday toward the 17th century walls that encircle Londonderry's commercial center, decrying a Protestant plan to parade past a Catholic neighborhood. In response to appeals by the town's Catholic political leaders, the marchers steered clear of Londonderry's most isolated Protestant neighborhood, the Fountain.

Protestant paramilitary groups loyal to Britain issued a statement here Thursday saying they would not declare a cease-fire to match the one observed by the outlawed Irish Republican Army for the past week in Northern Ireland.

Mainline Protestantism is graying rapidly, and two denominational studies show little hope that significant numbers of young adults will replace their elders in the pews. Just 13% of the members of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) are between 18 and 34 years old, compared to 36% of this country's adult population. And one-third of Presbyterians are 65 or older, nearly double the percentage of older Americans.

With the future of Northern Ireland's peace pact in doubt, British army engineers erected miles of metal and barbed-wire barricades Saturday on the eve of an annual Protestant march that has erupted into violence in the past. This time, the troubled province's police chief predicted that outlawed Protestant groups responsible for orchestrating much of the previous violence wouldn't mount organized attacks on his riot-hardened forces.

In a bid to restore power-sharing between Roman Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland two years after the process collapsed, Prime Ministers Tony Blair of Britain and Bertie Ahern of Ireland opened a round of talks Thursday in southern England. The discussions at Leeds Castle in Kent are aimed at ending the deadlock that has frozen the peace process in Northern Ireland since the breakdown of the British territory's joint assembly in October 2002.

Representatives of the United Methodist Church, meeting here for the denomination's quadrennial General Conference, voted this week to deepen ecumenical ties with a number of other Protestant denominations. Church leaders also continued to debate the issue of homosexuality, which has stirred strong emotions in the 8.9-million-member denomination.

A document whose aim was to foster greater cooperation between Protestant evangelicals and Roman Catholics is instead causing friction among evangelicals, some of whom think the declaration undermines their basic Protestant beliefs. "Evangelicals and Catholics Together," issued as an unofficial document almost a year ago, called on evangelicals and Catholics to recognize each other as Christians and work together on issues on which they tend to agree, such as abortion and pornography.

Maybe Catholics aren't such skinflints after all. It's no secret among researchers that Catholics put substantially less in collection plates than Protestants. What has remained a mystery, however, is why the descendants of immigrants who sacrificed to build magnificent churches and schools are giving less and less, in inflation-adjusted dollars, as their incomes rise.